CARRIE & LARS, June 2016

“How can anything be impossible in a fantasy?!” 

Carrie didn’t care to hide her annoyance in front of the cafe’s other guests. She gave her companion a peevish look. 

“There are three objections you can never get around,” Lars replied calmly, “if you want to live your life over. Even in a magical thought-experiment like ours.” 

With unaccustomed firmness, he added, “This is why Carrie Reese, professional housewife, can never change her past so she ends up today as a professional artist. But you can always—”

“Let me stop you right there.” Carrie rotated the spoon with precision in her pitch-black coffee. “ … When we were gaming in high school in Alan’s monster dungeon—the one with the map that filled half the floor—I found a Wish–spell. Remember that game?” 

She wagged a finger at him. “In a dragon’s treasure chest. Summer of ‘96?”

“How could I forget?” 

“You couldn’t.” Carrie winked at him. “I was awesome.”

Lars crossed his arms. “Yes, awesome at ruining the game. You wished all the player characters out of the dungeon so we didn’t have to fight anymore … ”

Carrie smirked. “That’s why one should never leave super-magical spells where this girl can find them. But … let’s imagine I found a real Wish spell at the bottom of a cup like this.” 

She plinked the handle of her coffee cup with her index finger. “Something that could make me go back and choose anything—like the right life! Let’s imagine that, Mr. Anestad.”

“I already have several times—for myself,” Lars said drily. “It’s futile.”

“Oh, you’re hopeless.” Carrie took the cup and slurped her coffee loudly. “Still hopeless … after all these years”

For a while they let it go there and then. 

They just sat with their half-empty espressos and crumbs on plates.

Around their table, the drowsy morning clientele of Yuma’s Daybreaker’s Cafe buzzed to and fro. Business as usual and as dusty as the desert borderlands outside.

Except for Carrie Reese and Lars Anestad. 

20 years after Cuyahoga High—and after that Dungeons and Dragons-session. And many others.

Lars sipped his coffee. “It won’t work. For you. For any of us.”  

Before she could get more annoyed, he continued. “Objection number One: Let’s say you go back in time and change into who you were at 17, no memories of your grown up self. You do that with your imaginary spell, yes?”

“I sure as hell do.”

“Fine. But if you start your life over without your memories, then you don’t know that you are better off. Then you can’t feel happy about getting a second chance! See?”

Carrie made a face. “You are also still a spoilsport … And the other two?”

“Objection two is that even with foreknowledge and everything—you’d risk changing a lot of things which might cause even more net misery for you.” 

Lars gazed thoughtfully at the behind of a waitress. “Heck, even good things you change might end up causing more bad things. Suppose you warn your brother about that mine in Afghanistan and he survives only to go home, get depressed and go out killing twenty people in a supermarket with a shotgun.”

“Lars, that’s morbid.”

“I’m just trying to explain why saving people won’t always lead to better outcomes—not even in a magical scenario.”

“Number three?” Carrie asked wearily.

Lars looked down at the pastel table. “You magic yourself young, back to 1996 and remember everything. And yes, after that you save your brother, and … and nobody gets shot in a supermarket. But …” he looked up “ … Even all that won’t make you happier than you are now.”

“Why on earth not?”

“Because you forget the secret downside.” 

“Jesus, Lars, you are so—”

He broke her off. “—You’ll go crazy from having to experience so many big and small events again—inevitable events. Movies you have seen before … all the little things that secretly annoy you about your friends. And worse.”

Lars finished with a knowing smile. “It’s obvious now, isn’t it?”

“Not … to me,” Carrie said, closing her eyes briefly. 

Lars sighed audibly. “No. I guess not.”

She winced. Lars had always had this aloof, even smug, demeanor. 

When they were in high school she thought it made him mysterious somehow. Now the charm had worn off.

She began to regret saying yes to this reunion. 

On the other hand, she had thought often about what it would be like to see him again, and … now, here they were.

“Explain number three again,” she demanded.

Lars wasn’t exactly trying to hide his impatience.  “Okay. You become a 17-year-old again, with a 37 year old mind. How would that give you any kind of happiness?”

Carrie gave herself a belly-pinch. “I would be just a little happy, I think, with less of this. Anyway, you said that I couldn’t enjoy it if I forgot I had been magically turned back in time. So fine—I will turn back and remember 40-year-old me.”

“37.”

“Same thing.”

Lars smiled vaguely. “And I say again that if you remember your ‘old life’ you have to experience everything—or at least very, very much of everything you already had experienced—twice. It’d drive you crazy.”

“Like venturing out of the friend zone a little too often?” Carrie looked straight at him.

Lars didn’t flinch. “That, too. But … It was a long time ago.”

“Yes. It was.”

“Look, I actually wrote a song about this just after my split with Luca,” Lars said slowly. “When I was thinking, like, constantly if I could’ve done more for my daughter …”

“Like staying with her mom,” Carrie said. It was not a question.

“Yes,” Lars admitted. “But I discovered if you … obsess too much about what could have been, you go nuts. So I tried to find a way to stop it. Stop asking: What if I had stayed with Luca?” 

He looked at her squarely. “And it was clear to me: I just had to realize the secret downside. I mean, if I had to live the last 10 years of my life over, maybe I could have dealt better with a lot of the shit that happened—but it would drive me crazy.”

He breathed in, then finished. “I’d not even want to relive half of it. I’d rather live today with regrets and move on to something new.”

“And your daughter? Dani?”

Lars looked at nothing in particular. “Don’t you think she is better off with a father who is not going out of his mind every day?”

Carrie sighed inwardly. 

Every time Lars enshrined an idea in a song somehow it became the truth. 

Literally. 

And proofed against arguments.

For Lars in 1996 and for Lars in 2016. Perhaps it was no wonder Luca was pissed with—

“Do you agree now?” He regarded her carefully.

“What about getting more success as a musician?” she tried. “If you did things again—but maybe twice as hard?” She smirked.”I know you, Lars Anestad. You could live with a lot of repetition if you could get a top 40 hit!”

Lars grimaced. “You can’t live off selling records anymore. I saw that coming already with Napster. And don’t get me started on Spotify.”

“Don’t worry about that.”

The discussion came to a halt again, which gave Carrie some bittersweet moments to consider how the hell it got started in the first place. This was not how she imagined meeting Lars Anestad again, after 18 years.

How can you be so close to someone in school and then grow into … strangers?

They had been four actually. “The Gang of Four” as their history teacher called them.

Lars Anestad, Carrie Sawyer (as she was then), Adeline “Lin” Kouris and Alan Stockdale.

Alan was Lars’ best friend, and Lin was Carrie’s. Lin and Alan played D&D roleplaying games together and from then it just sort of gelled. They became a group.

After high school Lars had been the only one of the gang who had ditched education completely. No college. Nothing. 

Just hitting the road with his guitar, trying to earn his keep and make something of his music.

Carrie had been sharing the occasional superficial message with Lars online for some years now, after a long period of no contact at all. 

He didn’t have a personal Facebook profile she could see but there was a page about his concerts which was occasionally updated, and an email address. 

Their emails were mostly like ‘Hi, oh so you are still out there, how’s it going?’ 

It never went on for more than a couple of lines. 

Sometimes she tried to deepen the conversation. She told him about dropping out of law school, the drugs, the roadtrips, the shit jobs and being married with children, one of them on the spectrum.

Lars just stopped writing back for a few years. 

Or changed the topic. He had been like that in high school, too.

And then …

An email about a concert with his name on it.

Yuma Art Centre. 

Intimate setting. 

Solo performance. 

‘Songs that will leave your heart changed’. 

A nice way of saying they probably didn’t expect a great many people to go see a little-known Gary Moore-wannabe without a band.

But would Carrie like to come see the show? She still lived in Yuma, right?

Right.

But there was picking up the kids from school, and Jon had a long shift. And the new nanny from last month had quit again to go holidaying with her girlfriend. 

No way Carrie could make an afternoon show with less than 24 hours’ advance warning. Only a quick lunch at Daybreaker’s, with Lars coming in from the road and she coming down from a mountain of laundry.

But that was Lars, all right. Always at the last minute … 

At length, Lars said, “It’s not about careers. It’s about if we can be happy changing the past—if we could change it. I know now we can’t.”

“Well, I don’t.” Carrie kept a firm hold on the spoon again. “I would enjoy reliving most of it, I think. If I could be an artist from day one, draw, paint, serious exhibitions, maybe a fill-in issue of the X-Men … instead of fucking starving that part of me for 20 years.”

She bit her lip. “I would also think saving my brother and … others would do more good than harm. I’d risk that.”

Lars held up his hand. “Once more unto the breach then: You are 17. Your present family, of course, somehow—” he made a dismissive gesture “—they don’t matter. You use your magic power and—puff!—goodbye 2016. Hello 1996!”

Carrie nodded effusively.

Lars leaned slightly forward, regarding her very closely. He still had beautiful eyes … 

But he was a different person now. And she was married.

Lars waited a few moments more, then hit the ball home. “Carrie, you have to experience so many events since 1996 all over again. Not just the same TV-programs. What about 9-11? … All the family misfortunes which you can’t change, like your aunt’s sclerosis? Can you honestly tell me you would be okay with that?”

She shrugged. “Let’s say that I am.”

“Okay, back to objection number two. What about Jonathan? You still want to meet and marry him, right?” 

“Yeah …” Carrie looked at the coffee. “I guess … ”

Lars continued. “Even if you met Jonathan, you might have changed so much he wouldn’t want to marry you.”

“Okay, so maybe we don’t meet—maybe I can’t have that,” Carrie raised her voice. “But if I was super-happy going to art school and actually having a career, a job …” She faltered again.

Lars snorted. “More like unemployed. It’s art, remember?”

“I don’t care! What if I was super-happy making that choice?” She felt something sting her eyes. “So today … 20 years later … I would be someone.”

“You tell me,” Lars said gently. “Would you risk a life without those who really mean something to you? Jonathan?  Your children?”

Carrie smiled wistfully. “ … Maybe not.” 

Lars nodded. “You see what I am getting at?”

“No!” Carrie was almost shouting now. “I should be able to use my all-powerful magic to make sure I still meet Jon, we fall in love, we have Emma and Michael—preferably without any diagnoses!” 

She put both her hands down with a ‘slap’, so their plates and cups rattled. “Objection number two, three and three-thousand: Gone! Puff—It’s A Kind of Magic!”

Lars got up from the table. Slowly. He looked and sounded like he was going to a funeral:

“If you need magic to prevent all negative consequences of anything you ever do in the world, that would be … the absolute worst outcome.” 

He looked down at her. “You’d have to stop everything in the world from ever changing just to make sure you didn’t risk anything becoming ‘bad’. Does that sound like a world that will make you—or anyone else—happy?!”

Carrie glared back at Lars for a long moment while the whirr of the cafe around them continued. People going through the motions. No magic there.

A diminutive redhead slid over to their table, notepad in hand. “Check? Or … is there anything else I can get you?”

“Nothing you have on your menu.” Carrie got up, too.

They paid and exited the cafe. Carrie walked briskly ahead.

Once they were out in the parking lot she turned around, facing him. “Is that what you are selling in your songs now, Lars? That we always have to live with our regrets?”

Lars shielded his eyes from the noon sun. “Maybe. But I prefer looking at what can make you happy today, and tomorrow. Yesterday is gone forever.”

“I wish I never played Dungeons and Dragons with you because I wanted … to get it on with  Alan.” Carrie huffed. “Maybe a part of me still believed you could get a big fat wizard spell that would just change my bloody life, no caveats. But then again, I am definitely not 17 anymore  … 

“I’m going to play a concert for eight people today,” Lars said while they headed for the cars. “The venue wanted to cancel, but I convinced them otherwise.”

Carrie frowned. “Why? You will lose money, too, won’t you?”

“I already have,” Lars said, “just by driving here. But it’s what I do. And there’ll be other gigs. With a bigger audience.” 

Carrie hesitated. A second ticked by. Two.

Then she reached out to give him a  hug. “If you say, ‘The show must go on’ now, I promise I will hit you.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Lars grinned and hugged her back.

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End of Renaissance – part three

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Cover photo: by Marcos Paulo Prado on Unsplash

Dungeons and Dragons game photo by Clint Bustrillos on Unsplash

Guitarist phot by Joël Vogt on Unsplash

Desert man photo by Reed Geiger on Unsplash

Girl and smoke photo by Yury Orlov on Unsplash

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50-280324

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Song: Gary Moore – Over the Hills and Far Away

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